Here Without You
by CitronPresse
Summary: One shot exploring Mark's possible reaction to what happened in episodes 4.13 and 4.14. Angsty. Characters: Mark, some Addison, Pairing: Mark/Addison


A/N: Thanks to my beta. Reviews appreciated.

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_I'm here without you baby__  
But you're still on my lonely mind__  
I think about you baby  
__And I dream about you all the time__  
I'm here without you baby__  
But you're still with me in my dreams  
And tonight it's only you and me_

**_Here Without You_**, 3 Doors Down

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In his dreams, her hair is always red. All his dreams are from the past, or from an imagined and impossible future, and his personal mythology hasn't yet adapted to encompass the new color of her hair on the day that her indifference let him know, without any room for doubt, that she'd left him for good. But it doesn't matter. Whatever color her hair is, she's beautiful, and she always will be. If her hair were all gray she'd still be beautiful. A part of him had hoped he'd be there to see that, but most of him had always known he wouldn't and, like always, life had conformed to his lowest expectations. It had trashed his hopes, the hopes that still intrude into his dreams and leave him vulnerable in the morning to despair, and that he could never quite work up the nerve to push for in his waking life.

Today, he can't be bothered to drink. He can't be bothered to fuck, even if anybody would have him. He's not in the mood. It's all finally caught up with him and all he can do is call in sick, cancel his surgeries and stay in bed all day. He can't even be bothered to order room service. He just makes some substandard coffee from what they leave in the hotel room and sips it, staring at nothing, until lethargy takes over again and he falls back into a restless sleep. It's so much better in bed, and not for the reason that everyone else would assume.

His dreams are full of hurt. He knows he hurt her, but it was without thinking. He didn't understand that sex with a Peds nurse, or any of the others, mattered or had any bearing on the love he shared with her. It was just something he did. Like pouring a scotch when he'd had a bad day. It meant less than nothing. He'd just needed it. It helped him. Ironically, after a meaningless fuck, he'd always come back to her a better man. More in love, if that was possible; more willing and more able to love her forever. He gets that she didn't understand. It's not easy to explain and nobody else understands it either. Intellectually, he's not sure that he does. But he knows how it feels and, although it's screwed up and compulsive, it's a real feeling that expresses something about him that's true.

He has this weight that he can't get rid of, in his chest—his heart maybe—and in his head. That was what the casual sex was for, and now he doesn't know how to cope, and all his memories and fears and regrets assault him. And he hurts. He just hurts and there's nothing he can do to stop the pain.

His dreams are full of her. Her soft, red hair. Her smell. Her taste. Her warmth, that he thought was his, but was only ever borrowed and at a really high rate of interest. He's never going to be able to pay off the debt and he'll always be playing catch-up. Except, maybe now he's so bankrupt, life will let him off the hook.

He's slept and dreamed and drunk insipid coffee and stared at the wall all day and now it's the evening. Tomorrow, he'll have to go back to work. He's a good doctor and, since that's the only thing he's got going for him apart from being too pretty, he can't blow it off another day. But his heart sinks, because the dull anguish that he feels when he thinks about getting up tomorrow and going back to the hospital is too much right now. He can't think about that. He just wants to keep hold of his dreams for a few more hours. But he needs some help and, like the self-destructive, addicted fool he finally understands himself to be, he dials her number.

"Hello?"

He can't answer at first, because unshed tears and anticipation have dried his throat and stopped his voice.

"Mark?"

That's a good sign, to someone desperate anyway. She still has his number programmed in her phone.

"Addison," he says, his voice is strained and withheld and harsh but it's the best he can do right now.

"Mark," she says, in the same tone of voice she used when she refused to dance with him at Joe's.

"Apparently, I'm a whore," he says.

This is met with silence and he can imagine her expression of unsurprised amusement. She wears a different expression in his dreams.

"I was never a whore with you," he says and he can't keep the emotion out of his voice.

She obviously notices, because she starts out by almost asking "Are you all right?" before she stops herself mid-sentence and instead says, "Except for all the other women."

He swallows. "Not the other women," he says. "Just us. When we were together. When we made love. I was never a whore."

There's a long pause, but eventually she concedes, "No."

That's all. There's no embellishment, no expansion, no protestation of love. But where he is right now, it's enough; enough to fuel his dreams for one more night, anyway.

So he hangs up, ending on a good note, not screwing things up, not saying he loves her. He turns out the light, rolls over onto his stomach to sleep and hopes the dreams will be enough to make him want to be Mark Sloan again tomorrow morning, because right now he really doesn't care.


End file.
